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Harlene, to your point, Compete's visitor counts are always less than what Google Analytics shows, but the relationship is fairly consistent. Compete, Inc. reports lower numbers for all sites that I have compared to the Google Analytics data... However, the under-reporting is fairly consistent and proportionately similar for all sites i have reviewed data for. So, from an absolute data perspective, the real value in Compete, Inc. is in comparing sites within a category. Google has used Compete, Inc. for a lot of research and analysis, so there is a relative, again RELATIVE degree of accuracy when comparing multiple sites using the same Compete tracking and reporting tools.

I have published ADM's Google Analytics data on numerous occasions and it appears on the home page for the past 30 days as a blue bar graph down towards the bottom in the middle column.

Harlene, to your point, over a period of time when I was involved with the online marketing for a dealership, I learned that Compete and Alexis were like rats in a cage. If I learned what they craved and gave it to them they would perform amazing feats for me. My training of the rats began when I noticed some vendors and consultants were using Compete and Alexis (and websitegrader.com when it was still around) as proof of their performance. Always a skeptic when a sheep comes knocking at my door, I decided to try to understand if the results can be “manipulated” in any way. As a result inside of a 90 day period we were able to drive “visits” to this dealership at its peak to over 130,000 in a 30 day period. We were able to easily throttle it back . As Visits went up it also brought Unique Visits up with it but not in proportion. I found a couple of screen shots from way back when this store was shown at around 50-60,000 visits a month. Google Analytics and our websites back end always told me the real story. Alexis, a cake walk….WebsiteGrader.com, we followed their rules and drove our grade to 99.4% (100% is mathematically impossible)….Now the good news, it made our site better, much better…it drove us to be as technically correct as we could be and learned a lot about what the search engines liked and disliked along the way. I also learned that they are great reference tools if you do not attempt to control them but even left alone they are just that…an internal reference. A screen shot from Google Analytics or a sites back end holds more water with me. I am in no way implying that anyone has tweaked the results for any of these tools other than myself…I am saying only that they are best suited for internal reference. Without any attempt to control the results, on any given month there could be a dramatic drop or increase in numbers that were not consistent with the real numbers. We knew something(s) was triggering this and we found out what it was and triggered what they were.

After awhile I might add, I was the rat, performing amazing tasks to get my reward. All in all it taught me a lot about how to build and maintain a website and get found.

Here are a couple of screen shots I found at around 50-60,000 visits per month, somewhere on this machine I have shots showing hits at over 130,000…I am just too lazy and old to find them.

I give my word that these are real screen shots. The store I did this at is the color blue.

Compete's data comes from a statistically representative cross-section of 2 million consumers across the United States who have given permission to have their internet clickstream behaviors and opt-in survey responses analyzed anonymously as a new source of marketing research.

Based on Compete's own statements, and the fact that our sites (including yours) are business trade based and not general consumer based I wouldn't think it would even be relevant to us.

Ralph, don't know why you felt the need to post this but that a HUGE discrepancy from Google analytics on the site during the same time frame. I've never found compete to be very accurate on anything I've run a real comparison on over the years. Have you ever checked the accuracy of your own site against it?

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